


Honey off a thorn

by i_claudia



Series: summer pornathon 2013 [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Summer Pornathon 2013, Team Gluttony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:59:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balinor has been gone these three years past, nearly four, but Hunith has yet to invite another man into her bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honey off a thorn

**Author's Note:**

> Summer Pornathon 2013. Challenge Four: Sleep.
> 
> Because the world needs more Hunith/Balinor always. (And tiny bb!Merlin, let's be real.)
> 
> [Title credit: "My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn." (Louis Adamic)]

Balinor has been gone these three years past, nearly four, but Hunith has yet to invite another man into her bed.

She has no need to.

When Merlin is tucked snug away in the cradle she'd built out of the old coop, when the fire is banked and the door shut against the night winds off the marsh, Hunith wraps herself in a blanket on the sturdy bed that was just a little too snug for two to sleep and closes her eyes. She does her best not to listen to the night: the dark is too big, too loud with secrets, too likely to reach spindly fingers into the thatch of her roof and pluck something else from her fragile hold. The blanket scratches, the mice rustle in the corners, Merlin breathes and smacks his mouth in sleep. She lets these small, familiar noises soothe her, ease the strain in her back from washing and the burns on her fingers from the fire, and sleep steals in like an old friend, rocking her easy and warm out of the world and into the next.

He waits for her on the other side, as he always does. He waits with a tiny smile under his beard and outstretched arms, folds her against his chest; he smells just the same, like new grass and old smoke. His voice is the same, too.

“I've missed you,” he says, and she can feel the rasp in the words through his chest.

 _You left me_ and _why_ and a hundred other words she might say hang heavy in her, but those are all words for the waking world; they have no place here, now, in sleep—here everything is softer, blurred out, overlaid with the gentle burr of bees and the smell of sunshine on heather. 

She doesn't answer him, only fists her hands in his thin shirt and pulls him to her. The kiss is a comfort at first, reassurance after the long day spent alone and weary, but it doesn't stay so for long. They both know their time runs short; it always has. His hands are big on her shoulders, peeling her shift down; he lowers his head to run his lips sweet across her breasts as her fingers close in his hair. She pushes him further, to his knees, and he goes willingly, laughing; his grin flashes up at her, wide and white while she cards her fingers back, curling her fingers around his ears while he curls his tongue up—up—up—to the hidden spots he knows as well as the angles of her face.

Her legs weaken under his attentions, and he catches her easily when she lets herself collapse; she pulls him with her, catching at his elbows until they go rolling over together, laughing, their knees and laughter tangling together until they come to rest. He kisses her again; she lets him, pushing at his shoulder until she can wrap a knee over his hip and roll him once more—until she has him underneath her, the length of his cock sliding close against her until she shivers. 

“I've missed you,” he says again, catching her hand with one of his, raising his other to brush her hair from her face. “Every day.” 

_Come home_ , she doesn't say. _Come back to me_.

She puts two fingers against his lips, instead, and rises up until he slips inside her. They gasp, together: every time it catches them by surprise, as if in the day between they had forgotten what this felt like, slick and intimate and utterly unlike anything—anyone—else. She rides him slowly, her head thrown back, his hands around her hips, his fingers sliding down her thighs and across her belly, and they move like the current of a river, rushing forward until they fall over a mountain into the ebbing calm of a deep rock pool: secret, hidden, safe.


End file.
